SPECTRE Creators Making New Blockchain-free Cryptocurrency

A veteran researcher who was behind two of the most influential papers in the emerging field of cryptocurrencies is preparing to launch a new cryptocurrency. Yonatan Sompolinsky is the one who authored the GHOST protocol and the SPECTRE protocol. He intends to release a new project in 2018 which is not named yet. Sompolinsky’s body of work thus far indicates that what he plans to release is going to address one of the biggest issues with cryptocurrencies: the speed at which transactions are distributed and recorded by the ledger system distributed over a disparate network of computers.

The founders of this project include the co-author of the SPECTRE protocol YOAD Lewenberg and a researcher Ethan Hileman, who worked with the team responsible for creating the Bitcoin privacy project called TumbleBit. Other than expert developers in the field of cryptocurrencies, this new team is also joined by an expert in business namely GUY Corem, who is the former CEO of the Israeli-based Bitcoin mining firm the Spondoolies-Tech. The firm had managed to raise capital funding above the $12 million USD mark through venture funding before shuttering down its operations.

This team has gotten together and come up with a new startup which goes by the name of DAGlabs. It is raising $15 million USD as part of a Series A round. The most notable thing about this project is their goal and how they are intending to achieve it.

They will not be relying on a blockchain system. Yes, they are going to do it without the blockchain technology. Instead, they are looking towards what is being called a direct acyclic graph (DAG) to operate the public cryptocurrency. This will be the first cryptocurrency of its kind. The DAG technology is something that Sompolinsky himself has framed in a way that there will finally be a viable payment structure with a distributed ledger system concept.

Sompolinsky has said, “We want to change blockchain into blockDAG. Whether you buy coins or not, you should think about this technology as the next step, releasing the blockchain from the naivety of the chain structure. You will feel this is the natural step towards using a real system.”

According to the team at DAGlabs, this new cryptocurrency will use a proof-of-work mining algorithm which will enable anyone who purchases the hardware to compete. He believes that it will not be competing with other blockchain based cryptocurrencies because their project is a niche, specific and well-defined one.

Even people with experience in the world of cryptocurrency find this concept an oddity. The idea is that the process of organizing transactions into blocks and then one being added to the chain can be improved. The blocks are created at a speed of 10 blocks per second in SPECTRE compared to one every 12 seconds in Ethereum. All these blocks will be referenced in a DAG, multiple interwoven blocks are created and the miners will vote in the most suitable block for entry into the ledger.

The project still has a long way to go and refine itself before being introduced to the public but it aims to resolve the scalability of cryptocurrencies. It will be interesting to see the new cryptocurrency coming into the market sometime next year and what impact it will have especially considering Sompolinsky’s well-established reputation in this field.

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